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The standard does not explicitly specify what happens if the "number" argument to the -c or -n option is 0. Historical implementations have handled this differently depending on whether the -f option was also given or not; "tail -0" usually resulted in no output at all, but "tail -0f" usually resulted in a dump of the complete file after a delay of one second. Some implementations have followed this for "tail -n 0" and "tail -f -n 0", some have not.

Action:
Either behavior may have been considered useful by application writers, so the standard might break existing applications if the behavior is not made implementation-defined. On the other hand, a perfectly defined way to make tail output all file contents before waiting with -f would be "tail -f -c +1", so it could also be decided that "tail -f -n 0" must not output any data initially.

Interpretation Response
The standard clearly states the requirements for the tail utility,and conforming implementations must conform to this. Concerns are being forwarded to the sponsor.

Rationale for Interpretation
The standard explicitly defines required behavior, except for tail -0f and tail -0 , which are unspecified. In particular, tail -n 0 and tail -f -n 0 are clearly specified. Implementations that treat tail -n 0
the same as tail -n +0 are not conforming.